Faith Doesn’t Play Favorites

Series: James- Faith in Action

Opening:

It’s hard to imagine the different lives some of us lead. Yet somehow we all have much more in common than we realize. I want to start by sharing about three individuals who had some things in common but also had many things that were very different.

One grew up in New Jersey in a catholic home to a father who abused alcohol and was abusive in other ways as well. He grew up being forced to attend mass and confess sins, but as he grew older rejected religion and found comfort in abusing alcohol just like his father.

One grew up a preacher’s kid and with a father who was present in his life and continually pointed him to trust God with his life. He grew up overseas as his parents served as missionaries and he witness up close how God worked in people’s lives regardless of their circumstances.

The final one also grew up in New Jersey but in a broken home without a father present being raised by a mom who had her own struggles. He found solace on the basketball court where he excelled and eventually led him to get a college scholarship and to play professionally overseas. When he returned home he went back to some childhood friends that had a bad influence on him and he quieckly began getting involved in some things that weren’t so good and eventually moved down to North Carolina for a fresh start. This is where these three men would intersect. The story of these three men and the impact they had on each other will help us see the words we read from James come alive and we will get to how at the end but first lets dive into God’s word.

James 2:1–13 ESV

My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

1. Lessons from James’ Example of Partiality

a. Chapter 2:1-13…in this section we see James shift focus and work through how partiality should be avoided in the church. When we put it all together, our speech and our actions point others to God and By serving others we fulfill the law of liberty.

Whenever I read this passage I can’t help but think of the Casting Crown song from a few years back that talked about this scenario and how the church passed judgmental glances. I can’t help but think about the church in Lawrence, KS that my dad pastored that had a Native American man that would regularly come and worship with us and during the week would walk the streets. It wasn’t uncommon for church members to leave a blanket or a pair of boots or some food in the spot he usually sat in to help him out. It really was a powerful thing to see as a kid and teenager. That’s how it should be, but unfortunately you hear stories and maybe have witnessed when it’s not like that. It’s the anthesis to how the kingdom of God functions.

In verse 1 James uses the name of Jesus which he only does twice in the entire book. The way James describes Jesus gives us an insight on who truly deserves our honor.

“Jesus is described here as “the Lord of glory,” perhaps to remind James’s original audience that there is only one individual who deserves special honor—and it is not the rich visitor to their assembly! “Lord of glory” may also add emphasis and seriousness to the exhortation against partiality, acting as part of an inclusio (literary “bookends”) paired with the warning of coming judgment at the end of this passage”

-Excerpt From ESV Expository Commentary: Hebrews–Revelation

As James gives us this example…some commentators favor a court room setting with both a wealthy and poor person being present…while most favor a church gathering where the seat of honor is given to the rich…regardless James makes sure to give a few descriptors that help us visualize this pretend rich person with fine clothing and gold ring being noted. James is making sure we catch that the externals is often what we focus on rather the internal value of a person as Imago Dei. It also points to how this has been a struggle for followers of God all the way back to when the Israelites were appointing a king with everyone focusing on the outwardly obvious choice of Saul when eventually the runt of the group David was made king.

“In memorable fashion, James lists the visible accoutrements of the rich man’s wealth (gold ring, fine clothing) rather than simply labeling him as “rich” (v. 2). The wording reminds us how partiality reacts to externals rather than to what is of real value. “Man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7).”

-Excerpt From ESV Expository Commentary: Hebrews–Revelation

The fictisous example James gives goes on to highlight how the poor person was made to sit at the feet of his hosts…which would be bad enough in today’s culture but was particularly insulting in Jewish and Greco-Roman society. In using this extreme example James sets up to show the foolishness of showing partiality this way.

Interestingly enough James also points out the inconsistency of showing partiality to the rich, since they were the same people who were oppressing them.

“James goes on to show the logical inconsistency of his readers’ favoring the rich (vv. 6b–7). Indeed, it is these wealthy outsiders who are oppressing and exploiting poor members of the Christian community. How foolish to fawn over one’s oppressors! Moreover, these wealthy outsiders even blaspheme the name of the Lord, and yet Christians continue to curry favor with them.”

-Excerpt From ESV Expository Commentary: Hebrews–Revelation

Sadly we are often guilty of this today as well. The very people who we want approval from, often are the same ones who don’t want Christians to have any power and often times speak out against God and faith. We have to be careful who we seek approval from and know that power and wealth are not primary indicators of when to show hospitality rather a person’s heart.

b. We honor Christ because he is rich in glory, we don’t honor the wealthy because they are rich. It’s also important to remember that Jesus came down lowly. The big take away for this section is that God’s economy is different that the world’s. We have to be careful to not let the way the world views wealth impact the church. As believers we must fight against this worldly desire of playing favorites or treating people different because of the power or wealth they have.

You shall not do injustice in judgment; you shall not show partiality to the powerless; you shall not give preference to the powerful; you shall judge your fellow citizen with justice” (Lev 19:15)

Derek R. Brown; Miles Custis; Douglas Mangum; Matthew M. Whitehead

When you live a good life so that God will bless you and take you to heaven, it’s by definition not good, because it’s all for you. All of it is for you. You’re not helping the poor. You’re helping yourself. You’re not helping God. You’re helping yourself.

Timothy Keller

c. It’s also true that when we show favoritism is disrespects man. By judging people by there outward appearance does not lign up with scripture such as love your neighbor as yourself, that calls us to a radical love that often makes us uncomfortable. In Acts 2 we see the early church do a great job of fighting against this as they literally shared whatever possessions they had amongst themselves so no one was lacking.

We also acknowledge that when we show favoritism it’s easy for us to start judging people about all things not just wealth or status and we must guard ourselves from letting partiality take root in our hearts where we start to discriminate against people based on ethnicity, culture, etc. It’s so easy to get to a “us” and “them” mentality and that simply does not lign up with Scripture.

So let’s be vigilant together to make sure that we as Liberty Baptist Church avoid partiality and truly love our neighbors as Christ demands us too. James reminds us that one day we will face a final judgement and the way we treat others, the mercy we show others, has a correlation on how we will be judged. This is heavy stuff. Make sure you are characterized as being full of mercy! Which leads us to our final point…

2. We Extend Mercy Because We Have Received Mercy

Verse 2:10 reminds that if we fail in one way we have disobeyed all of the law so we must stay on guard in this area were we so easily mess up.

Remember we can’t earn mercy, God gives it freely…but if we are people who have been transformed by this great mercy God has shown us, we should be willing to give it freely to others. In essence, the way we treat others will be a direct reflection of the mercy we have received from God. You should be able to tell that God has been gracious to you simply by how you treat others, period. You know one thing about being a Christian is they don’t make a scanner that you can wave over someone to tell if they have a genuine relationship with Christ.

Matthew 12:36–37 ESV

I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Verse 13 of chapter two sums up the point James is trying to drive home. Again we see a parralel from James to the Sermon on the Mount. There Jesus says:

Matthew 6:14–15 ESV

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Only God knows that, but you sure can tell a lot by the words people speak and even more by their actions towards others to get a indication of where they are spiritually. What would people say about you based on your words and actions? According to James a person who has truly encountered the great mercy of Christ will be transformed and this manifests itself outwardly by the way we speak and act. What a great reminder to make sure those two things truly reflect the relationship we have with Christ.

“Although all sins are not equally damaging or heinous, they all shatter that unity and render men transgressors, much like hitting a window with a hammer at only one point will shatter and destroy the whole window. accountable for all. Not in the sense of having violated every command, but in the sense of having violated the law’s unity. One transgression makes fulfilling the law’s most basic commands—to love God perfectly and to love one’s neighbor as oneself—impossible.” -ESV Study Bible

1 Corinthians 1:26–29 ESV

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

This passage is a great way to close out as it reminds us that the way the world looks at wealth and power is far different than what scripture teaches us. Ultimately we are fully dependent on God and when we look at wealth and power through human terms we will always miss what God is trying to do in and through us.

Action Step- Think twice before we speak, text, post as we will be judged for our words…We should be known as a church that loves people well and let me tell you I was encouraged by VBS as I think our church did a great job of loving on everyone that came through our doors! That is the goal. This is what James is trying to teach us is that we are a reflection of the mercy of Christ and when we give it freely and don’t show favorites on who we show it to it is a good reflection of Christ’s mercy.

Closing:

Leviticus 19:18 ESV

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

Deuteronomy 6:5–6 ESV

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

Matthew 22:39 ESV

And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Mark 12:31 ESV

The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

James is building off of the OT and the sayings of Jesus reminding his readers that partiality is not compatible with Christian living. I don’t know about you but I find it fascinating that in the middle of focusing on how we speak and putting our faith into action that James throws in this example of showing partiality. It’s almost like James knows it’s often easy to say things but much harder to put them into practice.

You’ve heard me say over and over that I am excited to be here and believe that God has great days ahead of us here at Liberty Baptist. But I want to stop and caution us here for a moment, in that it’s really easy for me to say those words and easy for you to be excited about the idea of growing as a church and us reaching more in our community…and it should be! However, we also have to be honest and say we are often times really comfortable in the way things are or how they have always been and when God brings new people in our midst it often pushes us a little out of our comfort zone. You might feel that way towards me at times if we can be really honest with ourselves.

This is where James words are really helpful. If we really want to live out our Christian faith and be a welcoming church we will have to put aside our comfort at times. We will have to welcome people in that might be different than us in various different ways. You’ve probably heard it said but ministry can often times be messy. Meeting people where they are with whatever is going on in their lives sometimes really stretches us. But boy is it worth it.

So going back to my opening story of three individuals let me tell you the story of my friend Alto…

One person I’ll never forget in my years of ministry is a young man named Alto. Sadly he passed away a few years back while I served on staff at Apex Baptist in North Carolina, but I’ll never forget when he walked through the doors of our church having just moved down from New Jersey. Pastor Kevin who was on my team as our pastoral care pastor and I sat down and met with him for about an hour or so. Lot’s of tears…lots of brokeness.

Simply put ministering to Alto was often inconvenient, sometimes frustrating, but in the end so worth it. I have to give our church credit as people really went out of their way to make Alto feel welcome even though he looked very different than 90 percent of the folks there. But as Kevin and I, and others in the church, began ministering to Alto you could see God begin to work in his life. Now it wasn’t always immediate but slowly God was chipping away at some of the things that had a grip on his life, and ultimately Alto surrendered to Christ and confessed him as Savior and Lord and was baptized. Here is that picture.

Now sadly Alto still was dealing with a lot of things in his life and unexpectedly died when he went back up to New Jersey visiting family and friends. It’s one of those things that honestly gets me very emotional thinking about, and in many ways I don’t fully understand why it ended that way. Here’s what I do know, Alto deeply impacted pastor Kevin and I and how we approached ministry together. It bonded us and was a powerful reminder to not judge people who walked through our doors. It pushed some of the people in our church to be open to someone who had a very different life than them and God used that in a powerful way. Ultimately it gave our church a way to minister to his family and friends back in New Jersey as we flew Pastor Kevin up there to preach the funeral.

I think God was pleased in how we accepted Alto into the church. I know God used it in my life and I’m confident he did in others as well. That’s the kind of church I want us to be as well. Not the outward stuff from my last church but that inward stuff that matters to God. We want to be known as a church that opens their doors to anyone and loves them regardless of who they are or where they come from. I’ve already seen glimpses of that and heard stories that echoe this, but lets take the words of James to heart and continually push to be a church that welcomes all and looks at each person as the Imago Dei that they are.

Let’s Pray….